Originally Posted by
PDR1
Oh balderdash!
The policeman (or whatever he was) should first have established that the captain had a lawful reason to have the passenger removed. You can't just say to a passing policeman "these people in front of me in the queue won't let me pass - please forcefully remove them!".
United had no legal basis for removing the passenger, either under title 14-250 or under their own CoC. They claimed the flight was "Oversold", but it wasn't - it was just fully booked. Positioning flights by company aircrew don't qualify as confirmed, reserved seats so they weren't "Oversold" within the meaning of the regulation.
I do get it that they had a problem needing to deploy aircrew, but there were lots of ways to solve that and gratuitously throwing already-boarded passengers off an aeroplane (in violation of the title 14 regs and their own conditions of carriage) is frankly not a solution that any rational company should be considering.
Actually, the carrier has a right like anyone else under common law to ask someone to get off their property. Working for a major carrier and having a discussion with a security department type one day I asked what our obligation was or the likelihood of being in trouble if we later, for example, found a person was not intoxicated (we never used to say that, just 'unfit for travel'). He and a Police Officer told me that an aeroplane is property like any other property and the owner of a property has the right to ask anyone to leave their property. If the person refuses to leave, it becomes a case of trespass. Common Law operates almost identically in the United States as it does in Australia. Further, if this goes to court, I don't believe the Doctor's 'standing' to sue will come from the injuries so much as loss from not being provided with something he had purchased. I don't agree with what they did but my legal understanding is that the removal of person(s) from an aircraft comes from common law rights of the airline perhaps supplemented by rules governing specific instances like entering an aircraft while intoxicated.